06/12 When watching the charts beats you up

I've relapsed into an old habit that I'm working to fix: day-trading these income positions. As I understand, these option strategies are not made to be day-traded, there are just too many variables that affect you when you get in and out of contracts.

If you're not trading intra-day, watching the charts will make you go crazy! It is like a surfer, watching the ocean.. He tells himself he is not going in the water, then he waits, waits, and eventually he'll dive in. Just when the conditions are not so good anymore.. Like that, if I'm watching the price action during the day, I'm getting all kinds of emotions running through my brain, and eventually I'll give in to the desire to "adjust" my position.

Or even worse, I've been watching the charts the entire week this week, and Yesterday I was simply too tired to know any better and over adjusted my trades, cutting the deltas by too much and without the best alternative. Long story short, I beat myself too much and made a decision without being on the top of my game.

So, from now on, I'll watch the market at the critical closing hour. And prepare contingent orders to cut deltas when they need to be cut. I'll use my extra time with activities such as backtesting and watching Dan Harvey's videos and sessions.

Just to be clear, I watch and trade intra-day. I starting trading currencies and later on learned about options. So, I'll be trading FOREX before the US opens. Being in Brazil, the time-zone is really awesome! It allows me to go to the wake up, exercise, have breakfast, trade FOREX, then study options. By the end of the day I get back in to look at my positions at closing and plan for adjustments on the next day.